Divided government can lead to gridlock. But it can also open the door to bipartisanship because the parties must work together to accomplish anything. On issues from infrastructure to prescription drug costs, both sides say they see common ground.

Can a leader offer compromise with one hand while keeping the other clenched in a fist? As a combative President Trump faced the press Wednesday, his message to congressional Democrats was mixed.

A tight job market always forces employers to get creative in hiring. But a worker shortage is especially challenging in places that are often overlooked: small rural towns.

From exile's heartbreak and loss can emerge kernels of new hope that dreams will be realized in one's next home. Or the next. For David Smolansky, following that path is a family tradition.

Decades of refugee arrivals have reshaped Clarkston, a town on Atlanta’s outskirts. Amid a heated national debate over immigration and asylum, Clarkston’s churches are playing a key role in the integration of newcomers.  

America’s midterm election has left Democrats in control of the House and the GOP stronger in the Senate. According to past experience, a divided Capitol Hill could mean stalemate for the next two years, besides Senate Republicans loading up the federal bench. Will the new Congress be equally far from heaven as from hell?

Or will lawmakers, as founder James Madison sought in his purposeful design of gridlock, be forced to focus on ideals and purposes that unite Americans? Can they divine what is divine in the body politic?

Good politics is not merely aggregating the preferences of the majority or balancing competing interests or reaching compromises on difficult issues. The Constitution’s crucible of divided government calls for more than splitting differences or a Lincolnesque “team of rivals” approach. American voters may be as divided as ever today. Yet polls in 2018 show they are more and more satisfied with where the country is going. Instead of winner-take-all politicking, they may seek all-can-win practical results.

The easiest common ground for the incoming Congress is obvious. More money for infrastructure. Approval of better trade pacts. And perhaps, just perhaps, a fully bipartisan approach to health care after the whipsaw over the Affordable Care Act.

Elections can be a poor filter for defining the common good. Yet the good is there if discerned. The United States was founded on the idea of pre-political “natural law,” or that individual rights and liberties were as inherent as reciprocal social obligations, or what Thomas Jefferson called “the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society.”

Such higher law requires elected representatives to discern its meaning and apply it to new situations, such as climate change or mass migration. Power may be vested in the people but the people can express, through Congress, the power of fundamental rules and principles that promote the “general welfare.”

Politics that relies on the need for a villain is no better than the plot of a romance novel or a sci-fi movie. In the new Congress, Democrats and Republicans should not villainize each other in order to win in 2020. In an age of warring political creeds, peace in Washington lies in finding the good that’s within. As President Barack Obama said after the “shellacking” he took in 2010 with the GOP win of the House, “The American people always make me optimistic.”